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The purpose of this research is to show that while mainstream finance for small businesses has been researched, hard to reach segments of the UK owner/manager population have eluded empirically rigorous investigation. The authors investigate the financing preferences of owner/managers in small ethnic minority businesses in the UK and examine their access to both formal and informal finance as well as the use of personal funding networks. The emergent results are compared with the findings from a matched “control sample” of white small business owner/managers.

Identical, in‐depth, face‐to‐face interviews were used with a sample of ethnic minority small business owner/managers and a matched control sample of white respondents in the West Midlands region of the UK.

Family and close associate networks were very important for the support of both ethnic minority and white owner/managers. All the respondents required loans from banks and other financial institutions, both at the start‐up stage and in subsequent years. For the ethnic minority owner/managers, the initial importance of financial institutions declined over the years. In contrast, in the control sample, institutional borrowing needs increased considerably. Ethnic minority owner/managers showed a preference for less intrusive and more “user friendly” financing options that allow them to remain in full control of their businesses.

Caution is advised in the use and generalisation of results emerging from qualitative research that involves small samples of respondents chosen from a restricted area of the UK.

The research shows the importance of “user‐friendly” financing options for owner/managers.

This paper seeks to evaluate the cultural variables which influence the growth of Turkish speaking ethnic minority businesses in London, UK.

The paper reports and analyses the findings of 227 face‐to‐face structured interviews with Turkish small business owners.

This study illustrates that there is a relationship between fluency in English and business growth in all sectors. Education appears to be an important variable for the business growth of the firms in the catering and service sectors. Reliance on co‐ethnic market is a key contributor to growth of firms in the retailing sector.

Data collection was limited to London; and non‐Turkish small business owners were excluded. Therefore, care should be taken in making generalisations from the sample.

This paper illuminates challenges ethnic minority small business owners may face in their determination to grow and highlights the options that they may consider as part of their growth strategies.

In terms of theoretical value, the findings of this study clearly demonstrated linkage between internal and external environments of entrepreneurship thus providing support for the “mixed embeddedness” approach to explaining ethnic minority business growth. What is distinctive in this study is that it recognises the need for ethnic minority small business owners to scan the dynamics of business growth and the survival process.

This paper outlines ways in which struggling ethnic minority entrepreneurial service ventures and their owners might respond to unforeseen economic and social shocks. Interviews with owners of Bangladeshi Curry Houses in the United Kingdom — whom historically have lower performance rates compared to other ethnic minority businesses in the country — reveal that the entrepreneurs' response strategies undertaken to survive and remain in the business despite the challenges faced from operating in a turbulence environment.

The authors conducted depth phone interviews with owners of Bangladeshi Curry Houses in London during January and February of 2021. The Gioia methodology was applied to the interview scripts to identify which crisis themes exist.

Despite no advanced educational training, Bangladeshi owners have applied all of the different crisis management techniques present in larger companies: retrenchment, persevering, innovation, and exit. Although the results show that government schemes aimed at helping small businesses have contributed significantly to their survival, concerns regarding the post-health crisis situation remain challenging and threatening for their growth and survivability.

The results indicates that the ethnic minority owned small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are less likely to plan for the future operations; furthermore, they tend not to have formulated a strategy for dealing with an external shock hence affecting and threatening their performance and competitiveness in the marketplace.

This paper seeks to investigate the provision of Vocational Education and Training (VET) in Small Ethnic Minority Businesses (SEMBs) operating in the West Midlands region of the UK.

A qualitative approach is employed, involving in‐depth, face‐to‐face interviews with 66 owner/managers of small ethnic minority businesses located in the West Midlands region of the UK. The research sample included 26 graduate entrepreneurs and 40 non‐graduate respondents.

Most of the SEMB owner/managers in this study exhibited a positive attitude towards VET. A large proportion of the respondents, however, admitted not to have provided any training during the previous 18 months of trading. Training provision appears to be affected by both “directly” and “indirectly” relevant factors. The majority of the SEMB owner/managers in the research sample do not have specific human resource strategies, audits, plans or related budgets, and training was offered largely on a reactive rather than proactive basis.

Caution is advised in the use and generalisation of results that emerge from qualitative research that involved a small sample of respondents chosen from a restricted area of the UK.

The paper makes an original contribution of exploring the area of vocational education and training in small ethnic minority businesses that is at the forefront of discussion in academic and industry in the UK.

Should enterprise support for ethnic minority firms be configured along ethnic lines? This question has confronted many officers engaged in the “enterprise industry”, as they grapple with the task of supporting the increasingly significant phenomenon of ethnic minority entrepreneurship. The situation is complicated by the markedly different experiences of ethnic minority groups in business; the apparently low take‐up of existing services; and wider debates in the policy world encouraging the “integration” of business support activities. Policy initiatives to support ethnic minority businesses have had to engage with such issues; but rarely have they been documented. This paper assesses the experience in a Midlands city of AsCo, a Pakistani‐dominated business group that is attempting to “bridge the gap” between South Asians in the retail sector and the providers of business services. The paper is distinctive in a number of respects: The issue of practical enterprise support provision for South Asian firms has rarely been subject to academic scrutiny. Hence, the paper provides a rare case study of this process in action; The design of the initiative was a genuinely collaborative endeavour involving the researchers, policy makers (the local Training and Enterprise Council) and small businesses in AsCo. Indeed, the research was commissioned by the local Training and Enterprise Council (TEC) and AsCo; A methodologically heterogeneous approach is adopted. This involved in‐depth qualitative interviews with 25 member businesses of AsCo (out of a total membership of 80); ten interviews with non‐members; observations of a number of AsCo executive committee meetings; interviews with key TEC officers; and an insider’s view (the second author) of how the research has actually informed TEC policy.

The aim of this paper is to explore the intersection between gender and ethnicity in relation to discrimination and the problems encountered in accessing social support (including emotional and instrumental support) experienced by Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) women business owners.

Qualitative data were collected through in‐depth interviews with 40 BAME women small business owners based in North West England. The main aims and objectives of the study were to: investigate the discriminatory experiences of BAME women small business owners related to the intersection between their gender and ethnicity, and to identify the forms (formal and informal) and types (emotional/instrumental) of social support available in relation to their entrepreneurial activities that enabled them to cope with and overcome, the discrimination they may encounter.

The degree of discrimination experienced was reported as a result of gender, ethnic background or an intersection between both. This was attributed to a number of factors, including stereotypical difficulties in accessing different types of formal social support, e.g. formal business and financial support. Informal support by respondents' families was reported as a key source of both emotional and instrumental support.

This paper is just a starting point for this area of research and, because the sample covers women from a variety of BAME backgrounds, it is not possible to generalise the findings to the wider population of BAME women. However, it does give an indication of what issues need to be considered in the provision of instrumental support for BAME women small business owners.

The paper shows that a key element in the development of a strategy for addressing the needs of the BAME women small business owners is the necessity to appropriately re‐design mainstream business support systems and financial services, in order to provide these women effective access to formal social support.

The experiences of BAME women small business owners have received little attention and this paper offers a unique insight into the relationship between how the intersection between gender and ethnicity impact on experiences of discrimination and social support. Whilst it highlights many intra group differences, it has also demonstrated the lack of homogeneity between and within women from different ethnic backgrounds.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and understand how Chambers of Commerce enhance networking among ethnic small businesses and enable the co-creation of value. This study contributes to extant research through the emergence of the concept of cultural networking competence. This study highlights how Chambers of Commerce in the USA ensures the continuation, growth and replication of ethnic small businesses through cultural networking competence.

This study investigates the research question by conducting qualitative research and adopting an interpretive approach of investigation in the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Chicago. Subjects were recruited using purposive sampling techniques via community links.

Findings show the existence of four different types of value in line with Holbrook’s typology of value – utilitarian, social, emotional and altruistic value. Because these values are culturally related, this study regards these values as cultural networking competence, which differs from general networking competence due to its focus on culture. With cultural networking competence, ethnic firms benefit from access to new domains, the creation of new opportunities, an improved effectiveness in achieving objectives beyond their own ethnic networks and the resources of other actors that can be leveraged for wider impact.

This study contributes to extant research through the emergence of the concept of cultural networking competence. This study highlights how Chambers of Commerce in the USA ensures the continuation, growth and replication of ethnic small businesses through cultural networking competence.

The purpose of this paper is to set out to evaluate the financial education needs of ethnic minority SMEs in the West Midlands region of the United Kingdom.

A postal survey was used to investigate the financial needs of owner/managers in 64 ethnic minority SMEs and a control sample of 23 non‐ethnic SMEs.

The results show that owner/managers of micro‐businesses have lower educational achievements as well as higher financial education needs than their counterparts in small and medium‐sized firms. In contrast, owner/managers in small and medium‐sized businesses have relatively higher educational achievements and a better appreciation of the role of financial education. Similar trends were observed in non‐ethnic SMEs in the control sample.

This article makes an empirically rigorous contribution to a relatively under researched aspect of SME research. The authors recommend that government agencies collaborate with leaders of ethnic minority communities to raise awareness of the benefits of education in general and financial education in particular.

The purpose of this paper is to address the cultural challenges of gaining and maintaining qualitative research access into ethnic small firms. In particular, it evaluates the influence of cultural affinity – between researchers and business owners – on gaining and maintaining access into ethnic minority owned firms.

This paper reflects on the experiences of facilitating and maintaining research access into a sample of 258 small Turkish and Chinese ethnic minority businesses in London.

This paper study illustrates that researchers need to demonstrate cultural awareness to ethnic business owners and understand the socio‐cultural environment in which their firms operate in order to be able to gain and maintain research access.

Data collection is limited to Turkish and Chinese ethnic minority owned businesses in London, and other ethnic entrepreneurs are excluded. Therefore, care should be taken in making generalisations from the sample.

This paper identifies a number of important skills which can be exploited in negotiating and gaining research access. These are communication, interpersonal and cultural awareness skills.

This paper addresses a neglected area in the research process, namely research access, which has important implications for the type of data collected, sampling and data collection techniques. The paper thus identifies “research access” as an important element of research design.